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Bigscreen v96.1: The Lighting Update

Hey everyone,

A month ago, we announced Bigscreen Cinema. It's been incredible to see thousands of people come in to watch 3D movies with us. Today, we are starting "3D Week" featuring four 3D movies: Transformers: Last Knight (NEW), Top Gun, and Terminator: Genisys, and our personal favorite, Ghost In The Shell.



[h3]The Lighting Update (version 0.96.1)[/h3]
We just launched a "LIGHTING UPDATE" today! We have been improving our realtime lighting model a lot over the past two years. On Christmas Eve, we released a teaser of this and after further tweaks, we're releasing it widely in several environments.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The Lighting Update primarily adds "shadows" to our lighting model, allowing the light from the screen to shine more realistically in the environment. It softens the light, and reduces the blown out highlights. Check it out in environments like:
  • Modern Cinema (improved)
  • Retro Cinema (improved)
  • Sci-Fi Cinema (improved)
  • Grand Cinema (NEW)
  • The Woods (NEW)
  • Home Theater (NEW)
  • Home (NEW)


And just to recap some details from our previous update:

[h3](repost) People want newer movies, ideally theatrical releases, but…[/h3]
This will only happen if we can demonstrate to the movie studios that we can make them money using these older movies first. So please help us out! The movie studios are looking to see if there is an audience in VR that will regularly attend movie screenings.

[h3](repost) What's Bigscreen Cinema?[/h3]
It's a new feature in Bigscreen! We partnered with Paramount Pictures to do official 3D movie screenings in VR.

These are super high quality 3D movies (10Mbps) streaming from our servers, and are nothing like the user-created Bigscreen rooms or Bigscreen TV channels. It's cross-platform (Quest, Rift, Go, Vive, Index, WinMR, etc.), and it's social allowing you to watch a movie in VR with friends and people in 10 countries around the world.



[h3]What's next?[/h3]
We have a huge list of features we want to work on, but it's important for us to prioritize what we need. We're currently working on:
  • a Friends system to make it easier to make new friends, invite/join rooms, see who's online
  • a Drive-in movie theater environment
  • special movie events (Horror Week)
  • a new feature to rent a 3D movie and watch with friends for free in your own private room. pick from a library of tons of movies, and watch anytime you want
  • adding more 3D movies from more movie studios, and licensing it in even more countries